‘Poor quality basic education, bane of sector in Africa’
A former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Jerome Siau Djangmah, has identified poor quality basic education provided by public and state schools, as a major challenge to the development of the sector in Africa.
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He said there was a “huge gap” in achievement between basic education offered at public schools and the same offered at the private schools and pointed out that “unless we actually bridge this gap, what is going to happen is that we have two sets of African children”.
“The children, because they live in urban areas and because their parents can pay fees, they are in schools where tuition is better, they end up being literate and end up being numerate. But the majority of the children are in the public schools where they do not have those opportunities,” he said.
Professor Djangmah was delivering the keynote address at the opening session of the 8th African Confederation of Principals (ACP) Conference, 2014 in Accra at the International Conference Centre.
The three-day conference, which is on the theme, “Educating the African child: Walking the policy talk”, is being attended by heads of senior high schools from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.
During the three-day meeting, the participants will discuss both national and international issues, learn best practices and share challenges.
Use of mother tongue
Professor Djangmah reiterated earlier calls for the use of the mother tongue as a medium of teaching at the pre-school and lower primary levels.
He said schools in Africa continued to use English and French as the medium of instruction at those levels, in spite of advice by psychologists that “the language of instruction is key and that if the child is to comprehend the foreign language that child has a handicap”.
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Professor Djangmah reminded African heads of senior high schools that the development of the continent depended on the decisions they made in their admission processes.
He said the decision of heads of schools could make or unmake the lives of children, who, when given the opportunity, could excel and help in the development of the continent.
Ghana’s education reforms
The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, in a speech read on her behalf, recounted the various educational reforms in the country.
She said as part of the national effort to provide girls with equal opportunity to access the full cycle of education, the ministry was implementing a number of strategies to increase female participation in the education sector.
The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Education Winneba, Prof. Anthony Afful-Broni, who chaired the function, stressed the need for a concerted effort to bridge the gap between the rural and urban child in the attainment of quality education.
The President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Mr Samuel Ofori Adjei, said studies had identified, among others, that the lack of realistic appraisal of how policies on education would work in practice, was one key reason why total success in education delivery outcomes was eluding Africa.